A New Experience

Today is grey, cold and foggy. It should be sunny. We are under an inverted weather system at the moment. The mountains are above the fog, in full sunshine and 4 or more degrees warmer than us on the lower mainland.
We went out for lunch with Nancylee and John, The usual conversations ensured. Well, where shall we go? The final choice was Mongolian Hot Pot in the Lansdown Mall. Only Nancy had been here before and it took her a while for her to actually remember where it was!

Table top hotplate.

The Hot Pot is also known as Fire Pot It can also be called a Chinese fondue and was an invention attributed to Genghis Khan. Every one of us agreed that it was an excellent choice. Each table has an electric hotplate installed in the center and on this is placed a bowl with the basic soup stock. It has lots of garlic, golgi berries, dates, herbs, ginseng in the basic stock. The food then comes raw and is cooked in the bubbling stock at the table.

The basic stock soup with medicine herbs.

Nancy chose three bowls of raw food. Nappa cabbage, a sort of cross between a lettuce and cabbage, iceberg lettuce. Very thin sliced raw beef and lamb. Tofu skins, its really tasty, tofu fish cubes, mushrooms, noodles and dumplings,

We all agreed this was unusually healthy restaurant food with no additives and the added bonus of being very tasty. The vegetables are put in the bubbling soup first as they take the longest to cook. Then the tofu and dumplings. The meat take seconds. Each person adds food as they want. The last food to go in the pot to cook are the noodles and by the time all the food has been cooked the soup is so tasty. To end the meal we have a very strange cold drink which is complimentary with each bowl of food. It a sour plum juice to help the digestion. It has a very strange smoky taste but not unpleasant.

This last pictures for Dave. Egg tarts from Anna's Cake Shop!